


Crescendemum

by Calaphrass (SexyStripedTie)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Azazel Had Plans for Sam, Borderline Dean/Sam, Boy King of Hell Sam Winchester, But not EXPLICIT Dean/Sam, DEAN DOES NOT COPE WELL WITH THE ABSENCE OF SAM, Dean-Centric, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Grieving Dean, Grieving John, Interpret as you wish!, POV Dean Winchester, Temporary Character Death - Sam Winchester, Those Plans Did Not Turn Out Quite Like He'd Hoped, but it turns out okay in the end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-22
Updated: 2017-04-22
Packaged: 2018-10-22 15:42:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10700046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SexyStripedTie/pseuds/Calaphrass
Summary: Plans, Dean hears whispered, from the lips of angels and demons alike.Plans gone awry. Plans altered. What will the angels do now? Who will the demons follow?





	Crescendemum

**Author's Note:**

> **TW: Graphic description of Sam’s (temporary) death; Dean grieving.**

The first time Sam dies, he dies young. 

Dean never sees the attack, but he sees the aftermath. Blood. Claw marks. Too-distant glassy eyes and too-cold skin on a young teen body too small, too soft, too _good_. They'd been gone five hours. Five hours and Sam's dead in the woods behind the motel, a nightmare scenario come to real, visceral, horrifying life. Dean upends his stomach, but he can't move his knees from the blood-spattered leaves and grime around Sam until Dad physically drags him away. Dean kicks and screams against him, lungs aching, chest burning, wild and volatile and _howling_ with grief. Dad drags him away. 

For half a week, neither of them can will out words. 

Afterwards, Dean heads to the back of the Impala, to where Dad had brought Sam. He goes to give Sam a burial -- because fuck hunters' funerals, if there's a way to bring his brother back he'll find it and he'll _take it_ , no questions asked -- but by then? By then, the body's gone. Dean's jaw twitches once, throat strained raw, heart blisteringly hollow, and suddenly the weight of the amulet against his chest is overwhelming. Dad. Dad beat him to it. He burned him. Neither John nor him bring it up -- not once -- but Dean never forgives him; not even a little bit. 

Afterwards, Dean does what he can. He grieves. And grieves. He blames himself, he blames Dad. He gets blackout drunk for the first time a mile away and wakes up handcuffed to their rented kitchenette counter, Dad asleep in a chair pointed towards him, unconscious from exhaustion, eyes red-rimmed. Dean feels like a monster. He picks the cuffs and buys Dad a big breakfast. Neither of them speak over the meal. 

Dad's the first one to find a case after... _it_ happens, and the look Dean gives him is blistering. _Sam's been desecrated enough_ , it says _. And now, what, we're just gonna move on? Pretend things are fine?_ But Dad calmly and quietly brings up Mary. Brings up their cause. Brings up how it's doubly important, now more than ever. 

It's a simple salt and burn, but Dean joins him. He ends up finding some small relief in it. The ache in his muscles takes away, momentarily, from the screaming grief inside him -- like a numbing agent. Dean thinks about mom. About Sam. Wonders, are they next? Thinks, if they are, that maybe that's a good thing. But Dad, it seems, is a veritable force for carrying on, and so when he stands up and carries on, Dean numbly follows.

 

They get closer to the crescendo, as the years go on. 

Most of it's a blur filled with hunting, muscle memory, booze, women, and hollow loss, but he has a few moments that peek through the grey. That wake him up. Mostly, through, he only stays alive through the repetition and the cold-blooded touch of the amulet tucked against his skin. Bobby looks unnerved when they meet again, a full decade later. Dean can't really find it in himself to care. Still, he appreciates the homemade food and the childhood bed, even if it reminds him of the memories attached to it. 

He's there, in said bed, when the first undeniable hint of crescendo hits. There's been... rustles. Whispers. Deaths. Storms. _Activity_. _Demons_ , he's learned. But there, suddenly finding himself out of bed and halfway down the stairs and eavesdropping on the kitchen conversation between Bobby and a hunter that dropped by from three states away, it clicks. Something's going on. Something big. 

For the most part, Dean ignores it. Focuses on the mission. Sharpens his tools. He keeps an eye out, though. Stays aware. And the closer they get to Azazel, the more he realizes that somehow, all of... this, all of _everything,_ is connected. 

He hunts. Studies lore. Watches. Hunts. More years pass, and finally -- inevitably, maybe -- they kill Azazel. 

Somehow, it doesn't feel like the crescendo. 

 

Maybe it was for Dad, though. Their victory is pitifully short lived. John Winchester dies, on a regular hunt, three months later. 

Dean gives him a hunter's funeral. 

He wonders, then, late in the night and full in the throes of drunk-stupid grief, if Dad had done it on purpose. He'd gotten his revenge, after all. What was stopping him from leaving everything behind? From leaving him. From leaving... _this_. This empty goddamn hellhole of a world. But who knew, maybe there was a heaven. Maybe he and Mom were up there now. And maybe, just maybe, they were finally happy. 

If that was the case, then where the hell was his absolution? 

Dean stands up, his Sam-amulet rocking loosely along as he stumbles, and _swings_ , throwing his beer bottle at the pire hard. It explodes, shattering into a million sharp little cataclysms of reflected fire, and Dean catches his balance and stops and stares at it, chest heaving, too-wet eyes fixed on it just this side of too long. 

Afterwards he straightens himself up and turns and leaves, the hell in his heart swelling up and over and over. (The night passes, and then the next day and the next -- numbness turns to anger turns to grief and back again till it drips from his pores -- and Dean sharpens his tools.) 

 

Turns out, there is a heaven. Turns out there are angels up there too. So naturally, the first thing Dean does when he meets one is _stab it through the fucking heart_. Turns out it didn't hurt them, but for now, for the sake of retribution, it'd have to do. For the blind eye turned. For the apathy. For the fucking _indifference_ eleven years, ten months, and sixteen days ago when _Sam_ \-- when they'd all let Sam-- 

Bobby pulls him off of the angel -- _Castiel_ , he learns, insides still howling at him to maim -- and Dean's made almost angrier by the fact that Castiel doesn't retaliate. He doesn't even fight _back_. And then. Then. 

' _Heaven has work for you, Dean Winchester.'_

To his credit, Dean has never told someone to go fuck themselves more unequivocally in his life. 

(A day after they part ways, Bobby texts him the equivalent of a ' _let me help you'._ The corner of Dean's mouth twitches, once, sharp and wan, something in his chest aching like a rumination over distant memories he never actually got to have. He appreciates the sympathy, he does. But no. Maybe in some other version of his life; but in this one? Bobby asking was downright _na_ _ï_ _ve_. He texts Bobby back, thanking and succinctly declining. He sets his phone down. He picks up the machete he's going to need next week -- vampires. He sharpens his tools.) 

Bobby, wisely, leaves him be. 

 

Later on, Dean discovers that the angels can't be trusted after all. Big shocker there. Dean's shocked. Really. He's also trained himself to the bone, sharpened himself into a perfect malleation of blood and hollow purpose, and done fucking around. No, he won't 'stop seals from being broken'. No, he won't say yes to Michael. No, he wont, he _wont_ , and they can't make him, because the worst torture they could possibly put him through had already happened. He was already living it. What more could they do to him now? 

Instead, he carries on. There's this-- _feeling_ , this wordless voice in his gut, that's telling him that _something_ 's coming. A culmination. A crescendo, maybe, finally. Not peace -- but _maybe_ an end. 

 _Plans_ , he hears whispered, from the lips of angels and demons alike. _Plans gone awry. Plans altered. What will the angels do now? Who will the demons follow?_  

Dean, obviously, doesn't have the answers. But he pays attention to the questions. He watches. Hunts. Studies the lore unfolding right in front of him. And speaking of lore -- people tell stories about him now, apparently. Word of his hunting, of his methods, of his involvement (or rather disinvolvement) with the celestial. He doesn't particularly care what they say -- only that they stay out of his way. He doesn't do partners anymore. He hasn't since. 

For the most part, the other hunters leave him be, too.

 

It's cold outside. It's early November again, and he's biting into a burger from a drive-through thirty miles behind him. The interior of the Impala is warm ( _toasty_ , even) and Dean thinks, _this was one of Sam's favorite things_. The comfort. The being warm and safe and shielded, when outside, the weather wanted nothing but to kick your ass. Sam'd stretch his body out as far as he could and hog the whole back seat and just _bask_. Dean had bitched about it, then. What he wouldn't give for it now. 

Dean comes back to, the burger in his throat only half swallowed. He finishes the bite, finishes the burger, wipes the grease on his jeans, and rolls down the windows -- letting the blustery chill wash in over him, trying to regulate his memories, trying to breathe. 

That night, he _dreams_. 

It's too vibrant, too vivid, too violently incomprehensible, and it's wrapped in a blistering, suffocating pungency. It tears into him like butter, because of course it does, because what defenses does he have when he's unconscious? It _hits,_ and when he wakes up he jerks bolt upright, covered in sweat, throat hoarse, lungs like lead. 

The dream's fucked up and entirely indescribable, but _Christ_. That was the point, wasn't it? It'd been a message, and maybe more importantly, an _explanation_. The exact one the angels had conveniently failed to give him. 

 _Stull Cemetery, Lawrence, Kansas._ It was a preview. A taste. Apparently, the angels _wanted_ the apocalypse. Which-- yeah, honestly, that sounded about damn right. And he wasn't an idiot, he _knew_ monsters fucked with people, knew that this could be that too, easily. Hell, they'd gotten into his head before. But this felt-- he couldn't _explain_ it. It felt different. The voice in his head. It had felt like a _courting_ , almost -- one tempting him into something too dangerous to contemplate, but with this edge of... strange faith. Of ultimate assurance. _Come and end it,_ the dream had tempted, the voice in his head sounding nothing like any angel or archangel he’d met. 

And Dean? Dean _is_ tempted. Despite all his caution, there's this desperate desire in his gut that's impossible to ignore screaming at him to go. To _run_ towards the damn cemetery, if he has to. It's not mindless, like with a siren -- it's this irrepressible, slow-spreading knowledge that something's there. Something that he needs to see. 

Dean packs up, hits the gas, and drives, the amulet warm against his skin.

 

When Dean arrives at the cemetery, it's... quiet. Almost bleak. There are birds, and a breeze, but it's nothing like the town he'd driven through on his way here. The silence isn't an _oppressive_ weight, but it is a present one. Dean steadies his grip on the Colt, demon blade tucked into the sheath on his belt loop, and makes his way in, dead grass and mulch guiding his path. He'd walked into worse traps than this. If it was one, he'd survive. If it wasn't... 

He doesn't know. He doesn't know what he's even supposed to be expecting. He's never this impulsive -- and yet here he is. Then the wind picks up. 

"Dean." The voice behind him is low and commanding. It's ten feet away and almost familiar in a way he can't place, and he whips around _fast_ , Colt raised, ready to put a bullet into whatever the hell snuck up on him. Dean raises his eyes to his face -- it's a man, or what looks like a man -- and their eyes _meet_ , and he falters, hard. He's tall and tan and dressed to the nines, and he raises his hands slowly in open-palmed pacifism, and it's-- it's a shapeshifter, it has to be. 

The man steps forward -- _presents_ himself, almost -- and Dean's mind goes mute; he can't even shoot the gun, much less keep it raised. It's not a shapeshifter. It's not a shapeshifter, because Sam had died when he was 13. 

"S... _Sam."_ His heart's in his throat. Sam's older now, but everything -- the eyes, the hair, the nose, the _mole_ \-- everything's the _same_. He carries himself like a freaking royal, like he owns the place and everything in it, but it's him. Dean’s not a _complete_ fool. Monsters had played his little brother before; very convincingly, sometimes. But right now, inside him, there was some sort of-- of _resonance_. He knew, he _knew_ , and he couldn’t explain how or why. 

Sam steps forward again, and Dean _lets_ him, his soul cracking open. He lowers the gun. He's shaking. He can't stop. His little brother's up in his space now, and he raises a hand, slowly, and places it on his Dean's shoulder. It's like a grounding shockwave; a physical bellow from the heavens that Sam's real, Sam's _solid_. Sam's alive. 

"I've been waiting for you," Sam starts, a crescendo building in the wind, and Dean's breathless, he can't _breathe_. "For a long, long time." 

And Dean? Dean's only human. 

He throws himself at Sam -- Sammy, his brother _,_ his _brother_ \-- yanking him down, yanking him close, squeezing him so tightly it had to hurt. He didn't care. He couldn't separate himself from his brother now, even if the entire fucked up heaven above them descended on them right here, right now. Sam lets out his own breath, uneven, ragged, and returns the movement, _envelops_ Dean, squeezing back just as hard. He's warm, so warm, the thrum of his pulse the most amazing thing Dean's probably ever felt. He has a million and one questions -- he'd need to test Sam, too, to make _sure_ \-- but he knew. Something in him knew. _Here was his absolution._  

" _Sam._ " Dean breathes, reverent and overwhelmed. Sam tightens his grip, desperately adoring, and it's enough. It's enough.


End file.
